Monday, October 15, 2007

With the temperatures finally dropping, this was a weekend that begged for fibery goodness...

The Spinning

I really wanted to work on my drafting and pre-drafting. Last year at Rhinebeck, I bought a few ounces of a chocolate brown Romney/Border Leicester roving which I pulled out of the closet on Saturday. Only fitting, really. It has been marinating now for a full year and should be aged to perfection. The spinning went pretty well: I was able to control the fiber better than ever and my single is pretty consistent, wouldn't you agree?

Much easier to see the single if you embiggen

Isn't that where you keep your extra roving?Note library books and sign in the background

The Knitting

Don't you hate it when you are working on a project and at the very end you need to start a whole new hank of yarn and knit up only about fifteen feet of it? Yeah, me, too. This is what happened at the end of the stealth knitting project on Saturday afternoon.

Instead of dwelling on the frustration, I decided to focus on the positive. There is still plenty enough yarn to knit the Neatnik a simple yarn hat. Ninety-six stitches leaped onto a size 8 circular needle at the birthday party yesterday. Between the birthday party and subsequent kwitting to the library, I was able to get quite a bit of hat done.

School Beans

Given the choice between a very simple decreasing pattern and a fancier one, Neatnik requested the simpler crown. So let it be written, so let it be knit.

A knitter can't live on yarn hats alone, though, so I queued up both Eris and Rogue on Ravelry last night. I also joined Jessie'sRogue Knitalong. What was I thinking? In my defense, I have to admit that it is nice to have a project or two on the horizon. I mean, after I finish Aaron's Aran, I have to have something ready to cast on, right? Research now and have some plans instead of waiting until the Aran is complete and wasting time hunting for a pattern while there is nothing on the needles.

Well, the Aran wasn't going to complete itself, so I cast on for sleeve #1. Everything went along just swimmingly until I reached the instructions for starting the patterning; this is where I encountered a typographical error.

There are 36 stitches on the needles and the pattern says to knit the stitches as follows: A-13, D-3, B-6, D-3, A-13. Do you see the problem I see?

Yes, there it is. If you add up the stitches in the pattern break down you get 38 stitches. Easy fix, though. Change to A-12, D-3, B-6, D-3, A-12 and continue on your knitterly way. This is, of course, what I did; I have just finished the sleeve increases so just a few more inches and sleeve #1 will be done.

Sleeve #1

The sleeve knitting is going much more quickly than the front or the back and not just because it is smaller: there's only one thing to cable in each cable row, not eight. Much quicker.

# # #

Lastly, a quick update on the Box Tops for the contest. The trek household currently has $1.80 in Box Tops. Yes, this is only a 10¢ increase since last Monday. We didn't empty any cereal boxes this past week and we opened only one new multi-pack of Cottonelle. Yep, bathroom tissue is on the list.

Even though this week increased our contribution by only one Box Top at home, at school I was able to add two Box Tops. On Thursday mornings, I volunteer for the hot lunch program. Two of the boxes in the supply closet were empty by the end of the lunch prep. With my eagle eyes, I spied the Box Tops. Quick, someone hand me a pair of scissors! Snip, clip: 20¢ into the coffers.

13
yarns:

Your spinning is lovely and even. It makes me want to ditch work and practice. Keep the box tops rolling. I've misplaced our ziploc full here. Hopefully my extremely neat husband didn't toss them while on a cleaning jag. More than likely I just stuck them someplace "safe". Cheers!